Given the amount of time I’ve spent in Antalya (about 6 months now), I’ve done surprisingly little exploring nearby. I’ve certainly travelled and visited more places in NE Turkey than I have in Antalya İl (an İl is somewhat analogous to a US state; Antalya İl is about the size of New Jersey (or Belize); Turkey has 81 İls, and they’re all named after their capital city).
A couple weekends ago, however, I did get out of the city. On Saturday I went with two friends and climbed on some of the quickly melting snow. We summited Alabelen. Alabelen is certainly not the biggest or most prominent mountain that you can see from Antalya. As a matter of fact, from most of the city you can’t see Alabelen at all because the foreground peaks (mostly Geyiksivrisi) block the view. Tunç is the big, snow-covered peak that provides such a beautiful, snow-covered backdrop to the city in the winter months.
Here’s Tunç from the summit of Alabelen:
Terry, Cemalettin, and I set off from Antalya around 6:30am to climb Tunç. We drove up to Feslikan Yaylası, a typical Turkish yayla in that no one’s there in the winter. We had planned to drive passed the yayla to get close to the base of Tunç. However, ice on the road stopped our vehicle progress. We parked and proceeded on foot. The weather was rather cold and windy and given how far we still were from Tunç, we made the decision to climb Alabelen instead. Or rather, I should say that Terry and Cemalettin made the decision. It was my first time there, and I didn’t know how long or far anything was.
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